I have not had classes since the end of July, but today is the first real "holiday" of the summer. People have off from work, so the one store I go to for my Friday Night Magic Tournaments decided to have a Legacy tournament. I think we had fifteen people? I came in eighth. Made a silly mistake last game of round four. Forgot to write down my opponent's hand. Called the wrong creature with Cabal Therapy.

Oh well.

The place is throwing a party tomorrow. Not a tournament. Just a social gathering. Play some games, eat some food, drink some drinks. It'll be fun.

Oh, came in second for Friday Night Magic. Went 3-0, but I lost two games and the person in first place didn't lose a game. Dayumn.

These days of "excess" fun can make me feel guilty, but on the other hand I am doing all of my work, so why feel bad? Why not just enjoy the time I get to enjoy and work the time I get to work.

Back in... 2014? a friend gifted me a Hobonichi Techo. Basically a daily planner. But with a nice, EarthBound, er, well technically Mother 2 themed case. I tried writing daily stuff in it, but that failed. I tried writing out my plans for the day, but that went mostly digital. So I tried, but failed.

This year I decided I'd just barf out my thoughts about the previous day on that day's date in the book. So I wrote about January 1 on January 2, basically. And I've been pretty consistent about doing it. Every day is filled out. Some days the writing is a bit bigger than others just so I can fill the page, but I’m writing. It's kind of cathartic to write about yesterday. It can also be hard.

Summer vacation came and I slipped. With my schedule being different I didn't write for weeks. I’d realize this and get kind of scared. I mean, oh no, work to do! Even though I don't have to do it. So today I caught up. Wrote about two weeks of stuff.

It's kind of hard to remember some days.

Which is kind of terrifying. Some days just are. You go through the motions. Do what you “have” to do. Then the day ends. And when you look back on it, it is just a fuzzy memory. Nothing grand.

I couldn't go back to school. I did fine in college but it was hell. Lots of money and I never felt like it was worth it. I learned things but it always felt so... forced.

Anyway, I took an online course about Machine Learning. It was about three to five hours a week and I got a hand on a new skill. Who knows if I'll ever use it in the future. But I learned something. And I have "proof" of it. Hooray!

I could take another course, but it's summer vacation. I need a little break. I think I might play me some Dragon Quest 11.

One hundred and nine hours from now the next area will unlock in Pictlogica for 3DS. I would have thought they'd cap the time at 3 days, but nope. They sure are putting up a wall. There are thirty levels. I'm on eleven. At least I am a busy man.

Although not with Dragon Quest 11. I am not sure why it hasn't got more hours put into it. I've been tired. Watching my son during the summer, and let's not forget that heat, has been exhausting. Not that I am complaining. Except that I am.

I have heard that things you want to do get done. Well, when you want a lot of thigns, they sure don't get done easily. Then again what do I want?

What I have played of DQ11 has been fun. Even though classes aren't in session, I at least have freelance translation work to keep me busy. Very, very busy. I also rewatched Rick and Morty. Okay, I could have played DQ11. But I kind of also want to stream it and wasn't in a location to do such. So I watched some TV.

I also hit my goal of ten movies this year. Yeah. I don't watch many movies. This isn't new movies. Just ones I haven't seen before. Number ten was Drive. Because I heard about it on a podcast. It's funny how I worry about game spoilers but give fuck all about movie spoilers. It's all in what you love, I suppose.

For some reason I rewatched Rick and Morty. Season 3 is not available in Japan just yet, and while I realize there are cough ways cough to see things, I try not to. I have enough stuff to do that I can wait. If it never happens though. Hm. Maybe when I take a trip back to the States.

Ah, summer vacation.

The last episode of season two hits hard. Especially when you're going through some emotional stuff. Which is personal enough that I don't want to get into at the moment. But things might change soon. In a big way. And the next few months are going to be me worrying a lot about people close to me.

This is vague. But I don't have anything else on my mind to talk about right now. These little moments in life can be rougher than you'd expect. And can leave you feeling empty.

Afterwards I feel a bit childish, but I am letting out stress. I am unsure if this is healthy or not. I do try to be a bit "goofy" about it so at least the other people around me won't think I'm just a sore loser asshole, but who knows.

I don't mind losing, but I do hate when it feels like I'm not playing.

Which happens, and I have to either accept that it is part of a game with randomness, or just quit. But releasing a bit of the steam that I have pent up from other parts of my life seems... okay? Except that I don't want to be a nuisance to others. But I do feel that rage intensely.

Then I get home, realize I got to play a game for a few hours and had a decent time.

Perhaps I should be using my Magic playing to work on being "in the moment". It's not a serious event, but I can focus on my emotions and realizing that I don't have control over everything that goes on in my life as much as I would like to have that control.

I just can't. No one has that.

I guess my biggest concern is losing friends. I don't want to be "that guy". So that is something to work on.

Ah, Picross. The damn number/block puzzle picture drawing game that for some reason makes time go three times faster. Even though there is a clock right in front of you, often enough.

A person who will go unnamed was talking about the 3DS port of Pictlogica Final Fantasy. The iOS version is probably my most played "energy" game. And now there is a 3DS version.

Okay, it has actually came out July 12, which wasn't as far back as I figured. But still. The first night I had the game I looked up and it was 3am. And I had work the next day. Fuck.

But that is Picross in a nutshell. The 3DS version of Pictlogica is different from what I remember. Well, there are worlds and when you complete one the next one is unlocked after a time limit. Which starts at... thirty minutes, I think? I'm up to 72 hours right now, so it does ramp up.

Of course one could pay to unlock worlds quicker. But hey. Why do that when I can wait? And wait I do, because goodness I have some games to play.

Plus, there is a lot to do in this version of Pictlogica. There are the normal puzzles, but also the battles. Which are similar to FF battles except after solving a 5x5 Picross puzzle the characters attack. If you messed up a line, that line's character doesn't attack. Otherwise they swing and based on their levels and abilities and skills stuff happens. Then there are quests such as "Beat this battle without using special skills." Or "Beat this battle with X kind of characters." Where X could be characters from a certain FF game, or characters who use certain weapons or magic. It's neat.

But any fan of Picross and Final Fantasy should put this onto their 3DS if they can. Because it combines all the fun stuff

Earlier this year I beat Lifeline. So I played its sequel, Silent Night. Not much different. Snazzier effects. A map giving Taylor’s location. Scrolling text! That scrol was awful.

Say the dialogue was three lines long. All three lines would scroll out at once. Horizontally. What. That’s not how people read! Okay, maybe someone reads fast enough that, wait, no. Part of the sentence isn't finished before you see another part of it. It made no sense! There was no option to disable it! It drove me bonkers!

I let the text roll out and then just read it all. I had to scroll back a bit for some of the longer dialogues. Of which there seemed to be quite a bit. Taylor encounters some live folk this time so the conversations show up. Each character gets their own color. (You the player, too!) So it is not hard to keep track.

Nothing much changed, though. Decent enough story. Got one bad ending. I rewound the game a bit, skipped over something by accident, got another bad ending. Scrolled back, did the thing, got the good ending. Hooray. Took a little longer this time. It didn't engage me as much as the first. Ah, the trouble of sequels.

Coming in during the release of Eldritch Moon was interesting. Standard was overrun by Bant Company, but I didn't want to invest into a deck that would rotate soon. Company decks seem to exist in Modern and maybe I could have gone that route, but no. I built a Thermo Alchemist UR deck. I did decent in some Friday Night Magic tournaments, and waited for Kaladesh.

The prerelease, the first one I had attended since… Torment? was a midnight one. I had become friends with people at this store, and it felt like a good idea. I pulled some okay cards, but didn't do too great in the tournament. On Saturday I take my son to Osaka. Found a nearby store that runs a prerelease that just happens to start after my son’s English class. And it ended before I need to go pick him up. Beautiful. Played in that. Sunday I went to a local store and played in two more.

I enjoyed Kaladesh’s prerelease. Aether Revolt was pretty fun, too. Amonkhet didn't do much for me and Hour of Devastation was some of the least fun I've had playing Magic in a while.

Part of it was luck. Nothing exciting in my pools while nearby people were opening Nicol Bolas and Masterpieces. Okay, not everybody, but three people opened Nicol Bolas at one prerelease. I got a land that can exile creatures I control. Yay.

Okay, this sounds like me whining about my unlucky pulls. I’m sure if I worked a bit harder I could have put together solid decks. I did pay for these prerelease by selling some good pulls I got in a Modern Masters 2017 sealed event. So I cannot complain.

But I’m just not that excited for Standard. With Wizards getting rid of Grand Prix Trials, it'll be hard to get my Planeswalker Points. Or Grand Prix byes at all for that matter. That is a bit frustrating. We will see how the next set and the switch to no small sets changes up the game. But it does seem that I came back to it at a weird time.

Okay, harsh. It was fun. Lots of neat little homages here and there, too. A side-scrolling, sword-swinging adventure was nice. It also felt a bit like VVVVVV and other “You are going to die a lot” games. Except the save points were spread out. Far. Far from each other. And I suck at action games.

So there wasa lot of repetition. Mostly my fault, to be sure. But the game did have a few cheap “Gotcha!” moments which were frustrating. Extra so when I failed for them again after making my way through a bunch of difficult rooms.

The bosses were mostly fun, but more so when there was a save point next to their room. Otherwise, yikes. I was actually surprised how easy the final boss was. Maybe the game had trained me up to that point. I think it took me two tries whereas some took me well over ten tries.

It tells you the number of deaths you've experienced after every one, and boy was that a thing. Sure feels good to break five-hundred. Well, that is the game I suppose.

There were lots of secrets, lots of side areas to explore and get good stuff, but of course they were extra hard areas too. Only one did I give up on. The timing to get past the spikes was complete and utter nonsense. But, hey, I am sure if I wanted to I could have pushed through.

But I did not. I mostly wanted to finish the game. And I did. It was fun, a little cute, and incredibly frustrating at times. But I’m glad I beat it.

Does this count? I have beaten it countless times. But I also beat it again when I picked up the Seiken Densetsu Collection for the Switch.

It is currently the only Switch game I own.

Well, aside from downloadable titles. But it is not a bad game to own. Three in one! And while this is a straight port, it plays well on the Switch. All the speed run glitches are intact. I think I beat it in under an hour. I'm still not good at speed running this game.

But one nice thing is that it maps Select and Start to Y and X. So you can soft reset with a quick push of all four face buttons. Handy! Especially when setting up some of the glitches in the game. One in particular is getting enemies to spawn on a screen that they don't appear on at first.

It is a weird little thing, but if you just go to this screen there are no enemies. But if you save and reset there will be enemies when you load. This lets you turn one of them into a snowman with the Ice magic item you picked up. Then you can walk over the snowman with the girl helping to push you over the snowman and then you warp to the end of the game. Oh yeah, the girl isn't supposed to be with you at this point. So, bonus weirdness.

I… am not sure why that works. But it does and it is one of three major skips used in the speed run. Actually, two involve scrolling the screen while half-standing on top of an object. Then you just warp to somewhere different on the map. The other one kind of makes sense because you are forcing the character through a wall. The game then dumps them into another dungeon. Just lined up that way in memory, I assume.

Anyway. It’s faithful. I still enjoy it. If I speed run the game again, I’ll probably use this version unless I find a reason not to.

Ah, Indie Games. A “genre” and yet not quite. Because that is like calling video games a “genre”. Well, I suppose it is a “genre” of entertainment. And so the subdivisions (Hi Rush fans!) go.

During one of the breaks in my four hour marketing class. (This was hell.) I remember the professor saying she hated that buzzword “genre”. I didn't know how to perceive the class after that. She also tried to make an example out of me because I sat in the back with my laptop in front of me. I had the class notes (available from the website!) and my own note taking app open, so I managed to say “Hey, I’m doing my thing. Can we get back to class?” but you know. I was the jerk. Which, I can see because I am sure many a student paid to not pay attention to her class.

The final, well. It had us defend the idea of a bottled water company not entering the “flavored water” market. A market that exploded soon after my class had completed.

I got a C in that class. I don't quite understand marketing to this day. That shows in my own indie game sales.

Aha! Brought it back to indie games, I did. Genius. Which is also a word I’d used to describe Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight if I was more of an asshole. I am, though, so I suppose I could use the word. The game is quite good. Controls well. Looks pretty. Has music. Okay, I’ll admit I am quite bad at remembering tunes. Sometimes they stick out in my brain. But I would put “Has music.” on the box of this game, if there was one, because that is a fact. And facts can be hard to come by, some days.

It is possible to equip three different items to use and two accessories to change the main character. I always hate this to some extent. The designer is limiting my accessory use because that makes things more interesting. How am I going to go after this boss? Or this area? So while I hate it, I like it quite a bit. Makes me think. The item selecting was a bit more of a nuisance. It just made me ignore some items throughout the game instead of maybe using them. The healing item, temporary attack up item and… something else that was useful in combat. Tht was about all I used. So there is the problem. The limitation lets a player get set in their ways.

I wished there were a few more save points. In retrospect, I think RUtM (ew, that sounds gross. Perhaps I shouldn't abbreviate it next time) was more generous than the next game I played. But that is another story for another time.

Some of the bosses took me a few good tries. Some of them I gave up on and went to explore a bit again, found some stuff, went back and was able to beat the boss. That was nice. The game does lock you out of areas until you can do certain things. This is as many a Metroidvania does, but I did feel a good sense of exploration.

The ability to warp is show in save point menus from the beginning. But it is not available until quite a while into the game. You also cannot warp to any save point. This made for a bit more travel than felt necessary. It didn't bother me too much, but it did stick out.

There are shops in the game that let you pick up various items and… they feel kind of wasted. It feels more of "Have you collected enough currency before finding this shop?” than normal game shops as your consumable items refill any time you go to a save point.

Spoiler time.

There are two endings. Both are from beating the final boss but the difference is if you got an upgrade or not. This upgrade is at a weird location around the midpoint of the game. If you remember to go back when you get one type of magic, you get the upgrade. And then beating the boss with the upgraded weapon gives you the “good” ending. There wasn't much of a solid feeling why this mattered. Maybe I missed some NPC dialogue that explained it. But it felt tacked on as opposed to say, Symphony of the Night. Of course, Symphony unlocks a whole new area to explore instead. Different outcomes, but similar concepts.

And that's the game. I enjoyed it. Not sure if I’d go play the other games in the series. I did see a new one is coming but it’s a 3D action game. I want to end that sentence with a question mark. Feels kind of like a departure and not something I am quite interested in. But this was a lovely world to dip a toe into.

macOS auto-converts “Rockman” into Rickman, which makes me want to go on a Yes bender.

Unlike my blog, I completed playing Rockman World and Rockman World 2 on the same day. Getting into that groove just does that to you. Yes, I abused save-states again. No, I still don't care. Rockman World 2 stood out a little less, and perhaps that is because I played through it so fast. Same deal, four bosses from one Rockman then four from another. Add some stuff unique to this version and boom.

But it’s Rockman. At this age it was soothing to cruise through another one instead of doing something else. Like playing one of those long RPGs in my backlog that haunt me for some reason. I like playing them, but starting to play them feels scary.

Which is a weird place to get into on a writeup on playing a Game Boy Rockman game. But that is what I know. I played this to avoid doing something else. Because it was soothing. Because I knew I could do it and that it would make the time go by in a less painful way. And it was okay. But it was forgettable.

Also, it’s July now. And my goal for this year was to be writing a blog post every other day. You can guess how that is going. Of course, there was this weird part in my brain that said: “Well, 50% is half a year. It doesn't matter if you don't write anything throughout January through June. You can just write something every day from July to December! Anything you write before June is bonus nachos!”

I wish I remember why I started saying “bonus nachos”. It started in college. It was something I am pretty sure I thought was clever. I have no idea why now, though.

Games you never finished as a child have an extra sweet taste when you do it as an adult. Even if you cough use the 3DS’s save state function.

Look. I am young but I don't have that many more years ahead of me.

Rockman World, confusingly called Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge, or as we kids just said “Mega Man for Gameboy”, has some rocking tunes, some tough levels, not much shown on the screen at one time and feels like Mega Man 1.5. I mean, it’s neat that they took bosses from the first and second game. And then added something of its own.

But that is pretty much it. Mega Man on the Game Boy. Nothing special, nothing terrible. Just a little game to enjoy.

When I reserved my Nintendo Switch I reserved Breath of the Wild. I tried, but I hated that game. Blaster Master Zero made me feel like the system wasn't a waste. Kamiko made me excited for more things to come.

Kamiko doesn't use any of the Switch’s “unique features” but that doesn't matter. It is a short, Zelda-inspired action game with three different characters to choose from. One has a sword and shield. One has a bow and arrow. The third has a boomerang-thing and a dagger she can stab with while waiting for the boomerang to return.

So, pretty Zelda-like. There are keys and mystic orbs (balls) that you have to carry to certain points. If you get hit while doing so, the item will crash to the ground and disappear. Whoops. Time to go back.

The game definitely feels like it has speedrunning in mind. There's an option to display your game time on-screen. There's a trick with enemy spawns, too. By leaving one enemy from a group alive, the group won't respawn when you run back through that area. (They would if you had taken out the entire group.)

I’m not going to go down that path - I am horrendous at action games. But it’s a short enough game that I can see people starting to speedrun it. The three different characters do make the game feel a bit different, which was nice. I ended up playing it to completion three times.

My one complaint is that I either missed or they don't tell you that there’s a charge attack available. Hold down attack and you'll use some of your gems to do a more powerful attack. The (spoiler!) final form of the final boss can only take damage from these attacks. So this confused me on how to exactly beat it until I looked up a video.

Oh, I didn't mention those gems much. To complete each stage you need to “purify” four shrines. To do so you need to have enough gems, something that all enemies drop, to do so. So there is a balance here. Kill enough enemies to get the gems you need and make sure paths are clear enough so you can backtrack with a key or orb. An interesting little balance if you want to play fast.

As a sub ¥1000 game, Kamiko delivered value well above its price tag. I can't see myself going back to it, but I’m glad I played it.

Ah, RPG Maker. How you tease me. Since I can code, I feel like RPG Maker is cheating. Then again, what is the point of reinventing the wheel. People have made pretty successful games with these “Maker” engines, and on top of that, people have released games. Something I've yet to do with my “”dream”” game of an RPG. So I always approach these games with a bit of jealousy. Why haven't I done it yet? And that clouds my experience. But it’s all in my head.

Helen’s Mysterious Castle was fun. It’s battle system is one-on-one. Your character versus the enemy. But each move, be it an attack, defense, or magical spell, has a time. And the same with all enemy moves. Making sure the timing is right so you take little damage and deal lots is important. Learning how the enemies will respond to the actions you take is important. It feels a little rock-paper-scissors in ways, but is much more complex. You can mess with some enemy AI, but I said some and maybe it’s all but I just couldn't figure it out. And that was part of the fun.

You control Helen a mute girl who can't even read, and go fight monsters. The plot develops in an interesting way. I’m not sure if I would say I “saw the twists coming” nor that they shocked me, but it wasn't bad. Care was taken to keep the necessary backtracking in the game to a small amount of annoyance. Plenty of pathways back to your main hub abounded. It gave the world of the game an intertwined feeling that made it all feel larger than it probably was.

Helen gains experience but it isn't used for her. Instead you use it to upgrade her weapons, shields and spells . At first this makes experience points feel like a tight resource, but by the end of the game they were abundant. This did make for an interesting mid-game because healing spells lose a level if Helen uses them outside of battle. An interesting little twist that made me watch my HP and try to heal during battle if it would benefit me.

Helen’s Mysterious Castle isn't exactly a long RPG, but its length is quite right. It felt challenging, but hardly ever too challenging. It was a fun little romp that I’ll probably never play again, but I’m glad I did.

As the years go by I find “looking forward” to something a bit… depressing. Because then it comes and goes and then what? I’m looking forward to something else. But I could not help but look forward to the release of Thimbelweed Park. I mean, it’s the folk behind Maniac Mansion.

That game was a huge chunk of my childhood. Even having completed it several times, I would still just boot it up and just mess around with what you could do in the game. Which makes it funny that I'm such a non-fan of open world games these days. I suppose it’s the limitations of these older games that made it enticing. It was seeing what you can do instead of what you can’t. When there are so many options as in the big open world games of today, what you can do is huge. What you can't is much smaller. Somehow this makes what you can’t do stick out much more and is more jarring.

Plus, Maniac Mansion only had so many verbs.

Anyway, Thimbleweed Park. I sure liked it. Played it twice, back to back. Completed both difficulty modes. I like how the easier mode streamlined the game and just let you get through it. The harder mode felt a bit more old-school. I had to look everywhere for things and make sure I missed nothing. That's not to say I didn't peek at some hints here and there when I was a little stuck. But I didn't feel too stuck that often.

Which is nice. Last year I played through some older adventure games and just kept a guide open that I referred to whenever a puzzle began to annoy me. Of course, there were no guides to this game upon release, so I had to work a bit harder, but I never really felt like I was missing stuff.

Except for one time. There’s a bathroom you access from outside of the convenience store, but there’s something one of the main characters said that made me think you couldn’t go in the bathroom. You could, and that was part of the solution, so I think tweaking that line of dialogue might have made things a bit better. Since there was no obvious door, just a sign, my misreading of that line led me to walking past the solution for quite some time. I figured it out, though.

Other than that the game went smoothly and I enjoyed it. It had just the atmosphere I wanted. It had humor, it was a bit Twin Peaks-y in a good way. If you think a little too hard, it doesn't make sense that the five main characters would be swapping items between themselves since they hardly have lines of dialogue together, but that gameplay mechanic trumps the flavor.

The game (spoiler!) gets a little meta at the end, but I tend to like that. There was one moment that literally made me jump - and I even knew it was coming. But it was a lovely homage.

I doubt Thimbleweed Park will bring back the adventure genre. It’s (spoiler!) clearly not designed for a sequel, but I sure hope the people behind it get a chance to make some more games. I’m itching for them.

I don't think I ever completed the original Blaster Master. I knew that even numbered bosses could be taken out by dropping a bomb and pausing. Thanks whatever Tips ’n Tricks book I got that out of. But the North American release had limited continues, and I could never make it far enough without dying the limited number of times. Apparently the original Japanese version did not have this restriction. My guess is that it had something to do with renting laws differing between Japan and America.

Anyway, on to the new.

Zero is a nice remake. It feels like the original but adds some new things. There is a refilling energy bar that is used for the sub-weapons, so no worrying about picking up the right items or any of that. There are a lot more sub-weapons than the original, and Jason himself even gets a variety of bombs to use.

There are a lot more bosses and sub-bosses, even (Well, this is a spoiler.) bosses fought while riding around in the tank. Yup. That caught me off guard. But it was a nice addition and fun to play.

Save-points have also been added, so the stress of keeping enough lives and continues to finish the game is gone. That works for me now. I’d argue that Jason’s final gun upgrade is too strong, and since there’s an optional item that prevents the first damage Jason takes from knocking down his gun upgrades, as long as you can dodge pretty well you can keep the powerful gun.

It wasn't as hard as the original, but it wasn't too easy. There’s a lot more story in-game this time, but it's nothing to go crazy over. It wasn't so much that it bothered me, though. All in all nice game to enjoy on the Switch.

I had seen pictures of Pokémon: Magikarp Jump on Twitter. Mostly it was silly puns, but they made me laugh. Who’d make a game about Magikarp, I thought. I wondered how long until it would be pulled down.

But The Pokémon Company made it.

That’s pretty awesome. It’s adorable and poking fun at part of Pokémon. Of course, it's a… Honestly, I am so out of the gaming world right now that I don't know if there is a term for this kind of game. Freemium? Puzzle-and-Dragons-esque? You know the type. You can only do so much so often. And that’s the game. Sure, make a pathetic Pokémon jumping competition, add in decorations for your “pond”, a couple different kinds of currency, levels to level-up and you've got a game.

It wastes time. It’s cute.

I deleted it.

It’s fine. It really is. But wasting time what I want to be doing? There is a part of me that feels like I have to stay “in” with the gaming world, but another, aging I assume, part of me just doesn't care. I suppose a few hours lost to a little game isn't the worst thing I have done. Playing another game is no different. Except for how I feel in the end.